Teams PowerShell datamining - Jan 2022

By Robert Dyjas on . Last edit:  • Edit this post

New updates introduced in the second half of 2021 introduces changes to Teams Consumer federation and more.

In this article, you'll learn about changes introduced to the Teams PowerShell module in the second half of 2021.

Table of Contents

New cmdlets

Microsoft introduced several cmdlets in many areas.

Audio conferencing policies

Audio conferencing policy cmdlets were mentioned in recent datamining article. At that point, they showed up and disappeared. They are now back and they weren't removed from General Availability (GA) release 3.0.0.

As the cmdlets are present in the GA release, we could consider them production-ready. Yet, no documentation is available.

Audio conferencing policy cmdlets are:

  • Get-CsTeamsAudioConferencingPolicy
  • Grant-CsTeamsAudioConferencingPolicy
  • New-CsTeamsAudioConferencingPolicy
  • Remove-CsTeamsAudioConferencingPolicy
  • Set-CsTeamsAudioConferencingPolicy

I've checked the parameters of Set-CsTeamsAudioConferencingPolicy. Turns out we're going to get the following options:

  • AllowTollFreeDialin <Object>
  • MeetingInvitePhoneNumbers <Object>

Based on these parameters' names, we can guess what that policy could do.

We'll get the option to allow/disallow toll-free numbers for specific users. We'll be able to specify numbers to be included in the meeting invite. Currently, we need to do this individually on people's accounts.

Unassigned number treatment

As the name implies, these cmdlets allow specifying how to treat unassigned numbers. The cmdlets give us the ability to specify the target and pattern.

As for the audio conferencing policy, the unassigned number cmdlets are present in the GA release 3.0.0. The documentation is already available.

Cmdlets related to unassigned number treatment are:

Telephone number order

Microsoft added five cmdlets related to telephone number ordering:

Documentation for these cmdlets is already available. It was available one month before these cmdlets appeared in public version of the module.

Encryption policy

End-to-end encryption was introduced and the relevant cmdlets were all added:

ACS federation configuration

For Azure Communication Services we're getting cmdlets to manage tenant-wide settings. They will let us limit which resources are allowed or disallowed.

The cmdlets are:

ACS federation functionality is currently in Limited Preview. But, the cmdlets' documentation is already available.

Removed cmdlets

Certainly, we're getting more cmdlets added than removed. But, it's worth having a look at the ones which are no longer available.

Temporarily removed

Some of the cmdlets are still yet to be included in GA release. Therefore, Microsft adds them back and forth between GA and preview:

  • Get-CsTeamsShiftsConnectionConnector
  • Get-CsTeamsShiftsConnectionInstance
  • Get-CsTeamsShiftsConnectionSyncResult
  • Get-CsTeamsShiftsConnectionTeamMap
  • Get-CsTeamsShiftsConnectionUser
  • Get-CsTeamsShiftsConnectionWfmTeam
  • New-CsTeamsShiftsConnectionInstance
  • New-CsTeamsShiftsConnectionTeamMap
  • Remove-CsTeamsShiftsConnectionInstance
  • Remove-CsTeamsShiftsConnectionTeamMap
  • Set-CsTeamsShiftsConnectionInstance
  • Test-CsTeamsShiftsConnectionValidate
  • Add-TeamChannelUser
  • Add-TeamsAppInstallation
  • Get-LicenseReportForChangeNotificationSubscription
  • Get-TeamChannelUser
  • Get-TeamsAppInstallation
  • Get-TeamTargetingHierarchyStatus
  • Remove-TeamChannelUser
  • Remove-TeamsAppInstallation
  • Remove-TeamTargetingHierarchy
  • Set-TeamTargetingHierarchy
  • Update-TeamsAppInstallation

Blocked number exception pattern

Blocked number exception pattern cmdlets have been removed in 2.6.0 module version:

  • Get-CsTenantBlockedNumberExceptionPattern
  • New-CsTenantBlockedNumberExceptionPattern
  • Remove-CsTenantBlockedNumberExceptionPattern
  • Set-CsTenantBlockedNumberExceptionPattern

Presence policy

Get-CsPresencePolicy has been removed. Most likely as a part of Skype for Business Online cleanup.

New params

Several new parameters were added. You might already know some of them. I mean especially these related to already-released features.

Fear not, though! If you keep reading, you'll certainly find something you don't know yet!

Calling policy

The following params were added for the calling policy:

  • AllowSIPDevicesCalling - determines whether SIP device can be used for calling on behalf of Teams client (from the docs)

  • AllowNetworkConfigurationSettingsLookup - defaults to false. No mention in the docs as of now. A similar parameter exists in meeting policy (see below). It might mean that feature is coming for calls and meetings.

These parameters are available for Get- and Set-/New- cmdlets.

Meeting policy

The following params were added for meeting policy:

  • AllowCartCaptionsScheduling - this has been mentioned in August edition of datamining. Now it's covered in the docs. CART stands for Communications Access Real-Time Translation.

  • AllowTasksFromTranscript - not mentioned in the docs yet.

    Any attempt to run it with PowerShell returns the following error:

    powershell
    You are not permitted to invoke Set-CsTeamsMeetingPolicy with the following parameters: AllowTasksFromTranscript.

    I guess that we're going to get some kind of intelligence to create tasks based on what was said during the meeting. It'd be like what Outlook Web App does based on mail content.

  • AllowAnonymousUsersToJoinMeeting - related with MC297030 Message Center entry

  • NewMeetingRecordingExpirationDays - related with auto-expiration of meeting recordings.

    Note

    Message Center entry earlier mentioned MeetingRecordingExpirationDays. Now the parameter has New prefix added.

    The legacy parameter was removed in October (with 2.6.0 and 2.6.2 versions).

  • AllowNetworkConfigurationSettingsLookup - defaults to false.

    No mention in the docs as of now. A similar parameter exists in the calling policy (described above). It might mean that feature is coming for calls and meetings.

These parameters are available for Get- and Set-/New- cmdlets.

App setup policy

App setup policy cmdlets got new parameter: PinnedMessageBarApps.

Guess - we're going to set which apps are pinned in the message bar. Sounds more like composing window than the chat top bar.

Message bar apps in Teams

Message bar apps in Teams

Tip

My prediction was correct, Microsoft announced that Admins can pin message extensions in the What’s New in Microsoft Teams | April 2022 article.

External access policy

EnableTeamsConsumerInbound has been added to New-CsExternalAccessPolicy and Set-CsExternalAccessPolicy cmdlets. It's also being returned by Get-CsExternalAccessPolicy.

Federation configuration

The external access policy described above works by-user. The federation configuration represents tenant-wide settings. This configuration is also updated with Teams consumer-related parameter - AllowTeamsConsumerInbound.

Relevant cmdlets are Set-CsTenantFederationConfiguration and Get-CsTenantFederationConfiguration.

Note

AllowTeamsConsumer parameter was already available when I started watching the changes.

Warning

Notice the difference - while for policies the parameters start with Enable, in the configuration they start with Allow.

Call park policy

Call park policy cmdlets got new parameters:

  • ParkTimeoutSeconds
  • PickupRangeStart
  • PickupRangeEnd

Before, we were able only to specify whether we allow call park functionality for users. Now we can specify timeout and the range of numbers used in parking.

Online application instance

Get-CsOnlineApplicationInstance got the parameter Identities. It currently has both Identity and Identities as parameters.

Messaging policy

One new parameter introduced: AllowUserDeleteChat. The default value of this parameter is true.

Upon checking on my test tenancies, I don't see any option to delete chats entirely. There's also no mention of that in the Roadmap.

There's no documentation about that feature yet.

You can already set the value of that parameter in policies and there's no error returned. This is an interesting behaviour:

Setting AllowUserDeleteChat via PowerShell

Setting AllowUserDeleteChat via PowerShell

Note

December 2022 update: The delete chat functionality is now being rolled out. The documentation of Set-CsTeamsMessagingPolicy already contains the description of this parameter.

Guest messaging configuration

AllowUserDeleteChat has been introduced to Set-CsTeamsGuestMessagingConfiguration cmdlet, too. It's default value is also true.

Using that cmdlet we could configure the ability to delete chats (if my guess is correct) for all guests.

Emergency calling policy

EnhancedEmergencyServiceDisclaimer has been added to an emergency calling policy cmdlets.

There's no mention of that parameter in the docs of Set-CsTeamsEmergencyCallingPolicy. However, similar cmdlet Set-CsEnhancedEmergencyServiceDisclaimer exists for Skype for Business.

The purpose of the E911 disclaimer is to provide a message that will be played whenever someone calls emergency services from Teams. We could warn users about the consequences of using outdated emergency location.

Based on the roadmap we can guess that it's related to Dynamic Emergency Calling for Work From Home. There are similar entries for VDI, too.

Enhanced encryption policy

Enhanced encryption policy handles end-to-end encryption (E2EE) - now in General Availability.

Removed params

AllowCallRedirect

AllowCallRedirect has been temporarily removed from Set-CsTeamsCallingPolicy. It's been added after a few days. Interestingly, this param has no mention in the docs for Set-CsTeamsCallingPolicy.

Refactored cmdlets

In September, Microsoft removed some of the parameters from all cmdlets. Such removal might mean code cleanup. The parameters removed are:

  • Tenant
  • DomainController
  • AsJob
  • Credential
  • RunspaceId
  • PSComputerName
  • PSShowComputerName

Now, these parameters are not available anymore. The only remaining parameter is Credential, which is used for Connect-MicrosoftTeams

Short script to check if any of the params exist:

powershell
"Tenant", "DomainController", "AsJob", "Credential", "RunspaceId", "PSComputerName", "PSShowComputerName" | ForEach-Object {
	$PSItem
	Get-Command -Module microsoftteams -ParameterName $PSItem -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue
}

If you omit -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue you should receive the error message:

powershell
No matching commands include a parameter named 'PSShowComputerName'.  Check the spelling of the parameter name, and then try again.

As in the screenshot below:

PowerShell cmdlet checking for AsJob parameter in the module

PowerShell cmdlet checking for AsJob parameter in the module

Conclusion

Watching Teams PowerShell module changes gives us a lot of insight. We can learnwhat's coming to Teams, even when before an official announcement.

The list of added cmdlets and parameters is long. It shows that Microsoft works on improving Teams service. M365 Roadmap describes the majority of them already. There's a list of the ones still missing anywhere. Turns out the latter can be interesting, too.